Archive for April 27, 2018

Erkin | April 27, 2018
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The World’s Largest Waterfall Isn’t What You’d Think

What’s the largest waterfall in the world? If you’re talking by flow rate, it’s Inga Falls. If you mean the tallest, it’s Angel Falls. The widest? Khone Falls. But if you want to know the very largest waterfall in the world, you’ll have to look beneath the ocean. That’s where you’ll find the Denmark Strait Cataract, an underwater waterfall with measurements that make the others look laughable.

The Denmark Strait sits between Greenland and Iceland.

Don’t Go Chasing This Waterfall

Buried far underneath the water’s surface in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland hides the largest waterfall known to man. Underwater waterfalls, known as cascades—or, when they’re really big, cataracts—exist when cold and warm water meet. The molecules in cold water don’t move around much, so they stay close together and make the water denser than warm water, whose molecules tend to buzz around and leave more space between them. That makes cold water sink straight down through warm water, creating a steady and consistent flow. Read more

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Erkin | April 27, 2018
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Lack of Snow Leaves California’s ‘Water Tower’ Running Low

Rising temperatures and declining snowpack in the mountains mean that the drought across the western U.S. is about to get even worse.

Sparse snowpack in California’s mountains in late winter 2014 is being repeated in 2015 (above, Mount Lassen in northern California). Snowmelt helps recharge the reservoirs that supply water to the Central Valley. 

Snowpack—which essentially serves as a water tower for the western United States—produces vital meltwater that flows off the mountains each spring. Like a time-release capsule, snowpack refills streams and reservoirs and waters crops and cities through the dry summer in this largely semiarid region.

But the snowpack is becoming more like a snow gap, as temperatures in the Cascades and Sierra Nevadabecome too warm for the snow that replenishes the ecosystem each winter.

Temperatures in the West are rising, and winter storms—which have been in infrequent for years—are bringing more rain and less snow. Read more

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